How Far Will Goodman Go In Gay Role?

2000-07-24 04:00:00 PDT Pasadena -- The question was how gay John Goodman will be in his new Fox comedy series.

"I have four words," Goodman said. "Gowns by Bob Mackie."

I wish. For that, I'd gladly go pay-per-view.

Goodman was kidding. The truth is that Goodman didn't seem to know much more about his first starring series than the critics questioning him.

The show is supposed to premiere on November 1, but it is still bearing a title no more descriptive than "Untitled John Goodman Project."

A pilot was shot, then scrapped. A co-star, Anthony LaPaglia, was signed, then discarded. Practically the entire supporting cast remains officially identified as TBA -- to be announced.

All of which makes the Untitled John Goodman Project emblematic of much of Fox's fall schedule. The Fox network is a work in progress, with more craters than a Bosnian minefield.

Goodman calls himself "a hired gun guy" and professes no concern. The executive producers -- Bob Kushell and the husband and wife team of Terry and Bonnie Turner -- insist it's business as normal. The Turners created "Third Rock From the Sun," which also experienced prenatal convulsions.

What's certain is that Goodman will play a divorced gay father in the sitcom. Building on the fortunes of "Ellen" and the breakthrough success of the ensemble comedy "Will & Grace," the Goodman show will feature the first openly gay male lead character in network history.

In the pilot, back when the show was called "Don't Ask," Goodman shared a Los Angeles house with his 20-year-old son (Greg Pitts, who is expected to remain in the cast) and LaPaglia.

Terry Turner said the pilot was ash- canned because it yielded too few comic story lines for future episodes. And because, a few months ago, he read a Newsweek story about the broad landscape of gay life in America, with a focus away from major urban centers.

The creative team began to redirect its thinking to a classic television device -- the fish out of water -- and to placing Goodman's character in a less congenial setting. "I always think that the Marx brothers are funnier at the opera than they are at the circus because the contrast is higher," Turner said.

Goodbye, West Hollywood. The Goodman show will now be set in the character's Ohio hometown. Goodman will play a working-class man, a contractor, who leaves California and returns home, with his son, after his marital breakup.

His name is William Gamble. His family and friends will know him by his nickname: Butch. Strange, but it might become the show's title.

Butch's ex-wife will still figure in the show, as will her new husband. The Ohio welcoming committee is to include Butch's homophobic, retired father and Butch's mother, who's been in denial over her son's homosexuality. Seems she's variously told the neighbors that Butch went west to become an airline pilot or a soap opera actor. Or that he died.

"I think we want to do a very old-fashioned family sitcom," Turner said. "A harder 'All in the Family' is what we're looking for."

Bonnie Turner said the new setting is attuned to her own childhood in the Toledo area. It's not so much that Midwesterners are hostile toward gays, she claimed, as "just uninformed."

"My mother will still say to me, 'You know, that boy you went to school with, who was the president of your class? Well, he's a gay homosexual, you know that?' " she said.

"And I go, 'Really, no kidding. That's real interesting.' It's not a judgmental thing, it's not a good or bad thing to her. It's just 'infor mation,' to see exactly how I feel about it. And then when I don't react, she says, 'Well, then, would you like some pie?' "

Goodman knows there's some delicacy about playing gay, and to his credit he vowed to avoid stereotypes.

"I'm not going to work like that," he said, in one of the few instances in which he didn't kiss off a question with a joke.

"I'm not going to do any stereotypical stuff. It just works against my grain as an actor. It's not the way I work. It's going to be all organic stuff and whatever comes to the fore, comes to the fore.

"But I'm not going to bring anything to the ballgame right now with any cliches, any of that crap. I'm just going to play it for truth. It's usually funnier that way."

Wouldn't want to come to the fore, let along the ballgame, with cliches.

Anyway, so much for the Mackie gowns. More seriously, the producers plan to skirt something else -- a lover for Butch, at least for a while. They said the initial priority is to establish the family relationships.

Read between the lines: It's a nod to network caution. It'll happen later, if the show clicks.

"I have to drop a few pounds first," Goodman said.

Bonnie Turner had her own thoughts on the subject of the character's libido.

"You know, if we wanted to do this show pointing at his sexuality all the time," she said, "we'd call it, 'Everybody's Uncomfortable With Butch.' "